Interestology [in-trist-ol-uh-jee]​​(noun) : The study of all things interesting

The newest flagship mobile processor from Qualcomm was recently announced at CES. Here are the key points about the Qualcomm 835:

1. Tensorflow Support: This will allow for more energy efficient local machine learning, like for an offline Google Now/Assistant and faster image feature recognition.

2. Foveated Graphics: You only render a portion of the screen at a high resolution. You can combine this technology with eye tracking to only do high-quality rendering where the eye is focusing. This combination is critical for VR in 4k.

3. Q-Sync: support for adaptive screen refreshment rates, similar to FreeSync and G-Sync on Desktop GPUs.

5. A 10 nm manufacturing process, using samsung’s FINFET fabrication. There would be a 27% performance improvement and up to 40% less power consumption compared to the previous version. The 30% increase in area efficiency obviously also allows for thinner phones and more room for other components.

6. More specifically, the octa-core Kryo 280 will provide a 20% performance boost for VR, application loading times, and web browsing when compared to the quad-core 2.15GHz and 1.6GHz Kryo in the Snapdragon 820. The CPU continues to use a big.LITTLE implementation with four high performance cores that can be clocked up to 2.45GHz.

7. Adreno 540 GPU has support for 4K@60fps displays with 25% faster graphics rendering. VR is definitely a key take away from all this, as this will allow VR to grow more and be supported by more devices.

8. Qualcomm projects 50% less energy usage than the 801, so expect a better battery life!